


Saving Rachel

by ilyena_sylph



Category: Volcano - Fandom
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Other, so tired of fridging
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-03-02
Updated: 2014-03-02
Packaged: 2018-01-14 06:54:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1256992
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ilyena_sylph/pseuds/ilyena_sylph
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I like Dr. Rachel. </p>
<p>I don't like that the director killed her off. </p>
<p>My Household challenged me to save her, and I couldn't resist.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Saving Rachel

Rachel felt a chill flick up her spine as she walked down the massive storm drain/maintenance tunnel with Amy behind her. She couldn't possibly be cold, not in the shining kiln suit they'd both decided to wear. It was just a reaction to knowing that seven people had died down here, that another might still die from his wounds that was getting to her, she told herself, and rolled her shoulders -- both to loosen them and to try to scratch the itch under her left shoulder blade.

It never failed.

The minute you put on a proximity, kiln, or entry suit, places you didn't even know _could_ itch started to, and your hair started escaping whatever you'd done to keep it out of your face. This was why she kept hers so short. She couldn't reach inside the flame shield, or under the air tank on her back -- so she hoped they'd reach the spot soon. Then she'd have research to distract her from the discomforts.

Amy was eager to get to the spot, too. She could tell by the set of her shoulders -- visible even under the suit -- and the way she moved, graceful even in the heavy protective gear. Amy could crack a joke anywhere, though, and Rachel grinned at the "Earthlings, we come in peace!" before she ducked under a tangle of invading roots. 

Wearing a car was a pretty accurate summation of a kiln suit, but she would never have thought to put it that way. Amy's flashlight tossed light against something on the wall that gleaned, and Rachel reached out to brush the heavy fingers of the suit down it. 

She couldn't smell it, of course, not through the face shield, but she brought her fingers to her nose like she could. Habits, so hard to break. It was everywhere, all down the walls of the drain. Not just the yellow dust of sulphur, shining traces too. "Cadmium, maybe nickel?" she suggested, "what do you think?"

Amy's "Take some samples" made her roll her eyes. Of course she was going to take samples, but Amy had a good eye for minerals and they might as well talk about something! 

How on Earth was Amy's flashlight dying already? They'd just re-stocked the truck a couple of months ago. Rachel shook her head as she kept walking. Heavier mineralization on these walls, and -- 

There!

That had to be the fissure Mr. Roark had talked about. She moved to it, while Amy struggled to replace her flashlight battery without removing her heavy gloves -- and nearly stepped on the carcass of a rat, charred to crisp almost-nothingness. She yanked her foot aside.

"What? What do you got?"

How fast had the heat come, that the rats hadn't known to run?

Too fast, whatever the answer was, and she frowned at the fissure. She wanted samples from both sides of it, and she was about to settle into a crouch over it when alarm bells screamed in the back of her hand. If the vent flared again --

Her thighs and knees, calves and ankles pressed tight together, unconscious reaction to the thought, and she decided to listen to that, kneeling down on one side of the fissure, keeping her weight solidly on the balls of her feet. As much as she could with the boots' layers of insulation, at least.

"I don't know," she called back to Amy's question, "I just don't know." 

She started gathering small rocks from the crumbled edge. This didn't even look like concrete anymore, it was brittle and crumbling and streaked with heavy coatings of sulphur-yellow residue.

And then the ground started to shake, vicious and violent, giving -- oh, God!

She flung herself sideways, graceless and clumsy, stretching out as much as she could. The concrete gave out under her, all the way up to her knees, and she struggled to drag herself farther away. The weight of the suit was dragging her backward, her gloves slipping in the heavy residue of dirt and rat corpses -- 

\-- she was screaming, begging Amy for help -- 

Amy's hands locked onto her wrists, hard, dragging her away from the crumbling concrete. One knee hit solid ground and Rachel scrambled desperately. 

The dark tunnel wasn't dark anymore, it was glowing red, and she rolled onto her back, staring blankly as the fissure billowed steam and gas that washed out over them both. There was an awful noise in her ears, coming from the vent, a rumbling kind of scream. 

It was hot. She could _feel_ that it was hot, these suits were rated for 430 C, 800 F, how could she -- 

Fire belched up out of the fissure, making her cringe backward against the concrete, and then it started... it looked like a vacuum was pulling it back down. It didn't just look like it, it sounded like it, the noise of powerful suction roaring in her ears. She stared forward as the tunnel went dark again, shaking from head to toe, and Amy --

Amy was crawling **towards** it! 

Rachel shot her hand out, grabbed her boot, and _yanked_ , yelling "NO!" over their radios. She didn't want Amy getting **near** that thing! 

"Rachel, we've got to -- " 

"No! No we don't! You stay away from that!" 

"You don -- " Amy's voice stopped, and she turned around, staring at her. "...Rachel," her voice was barely a breath. "I almost lost you. I -- we almost -- " 

Rachel nodded, her heart still hammering in her chest. "That's why you're not going closer. We... we're just getting out of here. We're going back to the Jeep, and calling OEM, and telling him to get everyone out of here. Come on, Ames. What if it flares again? The concrete's too compromised." 

//And I'm scared.// 

She'd never been scared of the ground before, not like this. Reporters scared her. Crowds scared her. The earth... it she'd thought she understood. 

But if she'd been kneeling over that vent when the concrete crumbled... she shook again, hard. 

"...okay, Rachel. Come on," Amy said, her voice very gentle. "You're right. Let's go."

She breathed out a shaking sigh of relief, nodded inside the kiln suit, and started trying to get to her feet. 

+++

They climbed up out of the tunnel into... darkness?

Rachel looked around, baffled. No street-lights, no power lights, none of the billboards gleamed with 'pay attention' flood-lamps. Nothing but a few fires burning in bins with homeless gathered around them. A few headlights on the streets, casting beams down the pavement, but... 

It was never this dark in Los Angeles. Ever. 

She started to struggle out of her kiln suit, and once she had her hood and mask off, she could hear something. Something like... water bubbling? She turned to look at Amy, then followed the beam of Amy's flashlight to the MacArthur Park lake. 

It was boiling. A rolling boil like God was about to dump a million pounds of spaghetti into it. 

It had been 62 degrees F thirty-six hours ago. Now it was over 212? 

"Oh, my god, Amy." 

"...I know," she replied, soft and shaken. 

The crash of glass was an alert that looting was, as usual, breaking out in LA, and Rachel kept a tighter grip on her gear. A helicopter's lights were shining down at them, and she shielded her eyes from the glare. Something drifted in the light, and she reached out. Ash dropped onto her hand, soft and fine, and she stared at her fingers. "Amy..." 

"Look west, Rachel," Amy said, her voice shaking. 

Her air-tanks dropped onto her foot and she was too stunned to yelp at the edge of pain. There was a plume of glowing smoke rising almost due west in front of them, higher than the highest of the darkened skyscrapers and spreading out as it hit either cloud-cover or a colder layer of air. It was boiling, rippling in shades of yellow and pink and grey, and terror clawed down her spine. 

That was an eruption. An honest to God eruption, somewhere between here and the mountains, between here and... and Beverly Hills. 

"Amy, what's between us and Beverly Hills?" 

"About a million museums, homes, the metro -- and La Brea. Oh, _god_." 

"In the jeep," Rachel declared, grabbing her discarded gear. "You drive. If you see a payphone, stop and let me call Ken."

Ken Woods, who was never going to let them out of his sight again, once he heard about this. 

+++

Ken had shrieked for a minute, but she'd yelled louder and he'd shut up, then started telling her what he could see from the news services. 

"It's the tar pits?" she checked, breaking into what he was saying, and he said, "Yeah, that's what we're -- " 

"Okay. That's where Amy and I are going, we're about three miles away. Call OEM, tell them that MacArthur Park Lake is boiling." 

"It's wha -- " 

"It's _boiling_ , Ken, like the world's biggest pasta pot. That fissure Mr. Roark found had lava pouring through it... fifteen minutes ago, too, but it's shut again for the moment." 

"I -- I -- " 

"Ken. Do it. I'll talk to you as soon as I find a phone again. Right now you've got to tell them." 

"I -- okay, Rachel." 

She hung up and turned around to fling herself back into the jeep with Amy.

"So?" 

"So it's La Brea, you were right. Ken's having to talk to the reporters and he's really upset. He's going to relay to OEM for us." 

"Okay. Good." Amy nodded once, the jeep's wipers trying to keep the ash out of her vision, and Rachel went quiet, staring ahead of them at the ever-increasing plume of smoke. 

"Amy, that thing is throwing lava bombs left and right," Rachel said, watching the cloud as they drove closer. Building after building was on fire, and that... that was still most of the light. Though they were getting close enough that there were flashing lights of police-cars and fire-trucks, police bikes and other vehicles. 

"I know, I see 'em," Amy said, her voice tight. 

A police car was slung across the road, but it only took Amy a few seconds of smiling and pointing at the CIGS logo on the door to get past him. 

"How do you do that?" 

"What?" 

"That, with the cop! You just -- " 

"Oh. Talent. No big thing. God, what do they think they're going to do?" Amy asked, staring ahead at the burning palm trees, the... the lava pouring across the street out of the tar pit, and the people in front of it. "All we can do is get out of the way." 

Rachel looked around, thinking about all of the people. "...there's no way to get everyone out of the way. They're going to try to fight it." 

"They're insane! You can't stop a volcano!" 

"You know that and I know that, but these are innocent people, Amy. So how do we help them? What do we need to know? What do we need to do?" 

"I -- I don't... "

"Okay, think about it. I will too." 

+++ 

This had to be what hell looked like, Rachel decided as Amy wound the jeep as deep into the pile of emergency vehicles as she could get. Lava hissing and fountaining up out of the tar pits and across Wilshire down into... Stanley, that was Stanley. but it was spreading down Wilshire, too. Museums in flames, palms in flames, and people in its way. She was still staring at the chaos, torn between amazement and terror, when the slam of the door told her Amy was out in it. 

She got out too, just in time to hear Amy screaming "No!" and stopping people from running. Lava bomb, she realized, looking up to track its path, and she dropped back behind the jeep as Amy screamed "Now! Move!" 

It slammed into the ground in front of them, shaking the concrete, and she just stared at the cracked breadcrust of the bomb. Amy was explaining, that -- that was fine, Amy was better at that than she was. 

She spun around, hearing Mr. Roark's voice, and ran towards him, almost as fast as Amy. 

He was planning something, something with a bus and -- 

She shook her head. There was no way. She saw what he was trying to do, but the lava was just going to eat it and come back around. There wasn't a steel in the world that could stand up to flowing lava, but he wasn't going to listen. 

She shook her head, leaving Amy with him, and went back to the jeep to dig into the maps, looking for contour maps. They needed to know where it was going to flow, and it, like anything else, would take the lowest course. Where was it going to go? 

Amy's screaming pulled her head up out of the maps and she stared, horror-struck, at Amy and Roark dangling from a fire ladder. It -- it was buckling, and they were swinging _across_ the lava... 

She was going to watch Amy die. 

The thought flashed through her mind, and she wanted to be sick, but she couldn't look away. It buckled more, the man on it kicking, and Amy was falling. 

The scream tore out of her throat, louder than Amy's.. and then she was just staring, because... 

Amy was alive. Amy was alive. They hit solid ground. 

She didn't even know she was running until she slammed full-force into Amy, her arms wrapping tight around her, one hand fisted in her hair as she shook. "You _IDIOT!_!" 

"Rach -- Rach, I -- oh, honey, honey I'm okay..." 

Roark was saying something, and she picked up one foot and kicked him in the shin to make him shut up for a second. "You -- you almost -- "

"We both almost," Amy said, shifting around and somehow getting hold of her jaw, making her look into those gorgeous blue eyes. "I'm sorry, Rachel. I couldn't just let that man die." 

...what was she supposed to say to that? 

She shook her head, hugged her for another second, then let go to look at Roark. "You said something?" 

"Yeah, I was trying to ask if she's alright." 

"Fine," Amy said, and Rachel knew she was lying... but that was okay, right this second. None of them were hurt. "Never better." 

He snorted, put a hand on both of their shoulders, and started moving them both away from it. 

Rachel liked that plan. She liked it a lot. Away from the infant volcano sounded good.

+++

Amy was trying to explain what they were looking at, that there were probably other vents, that they hadn't seen the main eruption yet... and Roark looked like she was kicking his puppy. 

Poor man. 

They probably didn't train Emergency Management in LA for volcanos. Well, why would they? Hawai`i, now, _they_ understood volcanos. 

Amy stopped mid-word and pounced on a reporter, dragging the phone away from his ear and ignoring his protests. Roark was helping her -- no, Roark was just stealing the phone to call one of his people. Emmit, or Emmett? 

K-rails? Freeway dividers? What was he going to do with those?

Amy was arguing with him, and Rachel hid her smile behind her hand at just how funny she found their bickering. Maybe they'd finally laid eyes on a man that wasn't a total moron about intelligent, opinionated women? 

Shit, she hated exploding glass! She hid behind Roark's leather jacket, barely listening to the argument between them as she watched the lava eating the bus. 

'Berms' she caught, and 'street' and 'improvise', and she blinked up at his ash-filled hair. He was planning on tearing up the street? With what, were there jackhammers in the fire-trucks?

...apparently.

She shook her head, and went to get her maps. 

+++ 

K-rails on Fairfax. It was incredible, what the men and women of the emergency service teams were doing, And at least the solid buildings were holding most of it on Wilshire. The ground sloped just enough, just barely enough, to keep it pouring that way, instead of down Stanley and Spaulding and Ogden. She'd heard, around her, that they'd gotten it stopped, or at least paused, along Eighth Street... for now. But damn it, where was it going to -- 

The emergency band in the engine closest to her crackled, strained voice relaying that lava was in the red line tunnel under MacArthur park, that it had completely engulfed a train. Next to her, Amy went pale, and tore off down the street for Roark. 

She came back a few minutes later, yanking at her ash-filled, soot-streaked hair. "That damned man! He won't listen! ...but he can only fight what he can see, he's right. Come on. We've got to go check out that damned tunnel. The Red Line, of _course_ it's the Red Line. _Damn_!" 

"You can swear at Stan later," Rachel said, getting up into the passenger seat. "Have you still got that phone?"

"What? No, Roark does." 

"Then go mug another reporter and go back and get his number," Rachel said, flashing a smile at her. "We've got to be able to stay in contact with him." 

"Mug?"

"Do we have time for this? Go be magic then, I don't care! Just get a phone." 

"Bossy,bossy," Amy said, teasing, but she got back out of the jeep and disappeared into the milling people. 

+++ 

They scrambled up into the dawn light, Rachel's nerves jangling still. Watching dirt steam was not one of her favorite things in the world, getting temperature readings of 600-plus Fahrenheit was even less thrilling. It wasn't going to be long before the lava finished eating through that cave-in and tore off on its way west again. 

She leaned against the jeep while Amy yelled at Roark to get to them, yelled about the force of volcanic eruptions and what they'd just seen, and she hung up the phone with a snap. 

"Is he coming?" 

"He's coming -- it worked on Fairfax, holy shit, Rachel, it worked on Fairfax. They got it to dam itself and it's piling up."

"Thank God. Now we just have to figure out where the hell this stuff thinks it's going. I keep trying with the contour maps, but there's the tunnels and all this concrete and -- " 

"I know, Rachel. I know," Amy closed her hand over hers, calm, firm grip. "You keep looking, while we wait for Roark." 

+++ 

"Nobody is going down there!" Rachel yelled over the two of them, and surprise clicked Amy's mouth shut. "We know there's lava in there! We have a camera! The _camera_ is going down there, both of you shut up!" 

"She's as bossy as you are!" 

"More," Amy said, grinning, "but she's right. Okay. Let's get this set up." 

Two minutes later, the camera was on its way down, and Amy was on one of her favorite tears about LA's development. 

Wait, he knew Matthew 7:26? 

Rachel wasn't entirely certain if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Midwestern, rural, and Bible-quoting? That could be trouble. For a minute, Rachel thought things might be okay, looking at just the tunnel... and then the camera swung around to face the east and her heart leapt into her throat. 

Lava. Superheated lava, pouring towards them. She grabbed at Amy, just as Roark seemed to realize what was going on, and all three of them hit the ground in a tangle. 

A ball of fire burst up through the manhole -- or whatever it was -- and it looked like that vent, like -- 

She shook her head, swearing, as she got back on her feet, "Oh don't do that!" she snapped, not in time to keep Roark from trying to burn his hand off. 

"Amy, it's running at speed in the Red Line. Isn't the Red Line the one under construction?" 

"Yeah," Amy nodded, while Roark swore and started unhooking the jeep from the chain they'd used to open the hatch. 

"You're better at computers," Rachel told her, "you work on figuring out how fast it's moving. I'll take shotgun and make calls for Mr. Roark. You, sir, get us moving west as fast as you can."

"Yes ma'am," he said after a second of just staring at her. 

+++

Listening to him on the phone with transit nearly broke her heart. Kelly. He'd said that name before. Didn't sound like a man talking about his wife... had to be a daughter, or a sister. 

He was so terrified, and trying desperately to hide it, to figure out a solution, anything that could save the thousands of people in Cedars Sinai hospital and the Beverly Center... she just wished she had any ideas that could help. Amy said cave-in, and she gasped. 

"Can they drop sections of the tunnel? Force collapses? Have to do it from the street, can't put anyone down there, but it would slow it down." 

"Slow it down or force it to erupt right in the middle of Wilshire," Amy said, her eyes flicking forward to her. 

"Well, better there than at the hospital!" 

"Yeah, but there we can't force it down into Ballona Creek..." 

"So we buy time," Rachel said, looking at Roark, who shoved his hand through his hair.

"Not sure how much time we've got -- come on, Amy, how long?!" 

"....half an hour. Maybe less." 

"God." Rachel heard herself say along with Roark, and she shoved a hand through her hair. 

"Concrete. Concrete, gravel, rock... anything we can dump in front of it to slow it down, buy more time for those people! Heck, water, cool it down!"

" _That's_ a thought," Roark said, and gave her a number to call while he organized a demolitions team. 

+++ 

They'd started pumping water down into the Red Line tunnel well before Roark, she, and Amy got to San Vicente and La Cienega, and she could hear, faintly, the hissing of steam erupting up out of the manholes blocks away. But it was cooling the lava, making it fight its way past itself. 

Every precious minute counted, she knew, as Roark bellowed out his plan to get the eruption to the ocean. She exchanged a skeptical look with one of the cops yelling about blowing up the street... and then something about the ground got her attention and she ran for the back of the van, Amy on her heels. 

Contour map, contour -- there!

She pulled it out, spreading it against the jeep's side... and she wanted to weep. 

All of their planning, all of their effort, and _gravity_ was going to beat them? 

She handed the map to Amy, staring at the thousands of people in danger -- no, not just in danger. The thousands of people that were going to die -- in numb dismay. 

She could half-hear Roark stammering, and she turned to look at his face. 

She'd never seen that much devastation, that much shaken pain. He had no idea how to handle that he didn't know what to do, that he was out of miracles that could save these people. She didn't either. 

He looked away from her, looking at... nothing, for all she could see, and then...

"What about a dam?" 

What? 

"What about a dam?!" there was energy in his face again, energy and excitement, as he rattled off his plan to drop that half-built monstrosity of a skyscraper between the people and the spot they all knew the eruption was going to punch through. 

She'd never heard of such a thing, and the cops obviously hadn't either -- but oh, they were going to try!

They were going to try. 

This was the craziest day she'd ever been through, too many close calls with one of the most destructive forces in the world and they weren't done yet... but she was so incredibly proud of her city's cops and firefighters, all of the doctors and nurses and orderlies out there in this ash fighting to save people's lives.

Amy caught him, asking how they could help, and... Kelly was a pretty girl, Rachel realized. 

So that was their job at this point. Find his daughter. 

+++ 

"Mike Roark!" 

Her throat ached from yelling, her ears ached from... everything. the explosions, the shattering glass, the noise of thousands of tons of concrete and steel hitting the ground in one long collapse, and the dozens of people bellowing one name. 

He had to be alive. He _had_ to be. 

If they'd come through all of this but lost him... she reached out, wrapping her hand through Amy's as Amy yelled again. 

Crunch. crunch, clatter... 

Her head jerked around, towards the noise, and... 

"YES!" she screamed, her grip on Amy tightening and then releasing as she saw Roark -- with a four-year-old on one hip, where had that come from? -- and his Kelly on his other side. 

Her knees wanted to go out from under her at the wave of relief she felt. Amy held her up, though, and then the two of them scrambled across the concrete to reach him. 

+++ 

"It worked," she breathed, staring at the footage of the lava reaching the ocean from where she'd fallen over on Roark's living-room floor. "It really worked." 

"Sure did," Amy said, petting her hair -- which she was pretty sure was never going to be the same. Ash and soot and then LA rain? 

Ohh, she was tired. She was worrying about her hair. "The papers we can write about this, Amy..."

"Only you would think that was exciting, but... they're definitely going to be interesting. Pity most of the data is just anecdotal..." 

"It was a unique event -- thus far in history, at least," she quickly qualified the comment. "How could it be anything but?" 

"Would you two stop talking shop? I'm on vacation." 

"We're not." Amy pointed out, but then she smiled, that bright, gorgeous smile of hers, "but all right. I think I'm exhausted. How is it not even 2pm?"

"Because we got up at 3am," Rachel pointed out, and Roark stared at them both.

"That was way before the quake, what were you two -- " 

"Oh, nothing much," Amy said, and Rachel tried to keep a straight face.She felt like she could fall asleep, right here, with the two of them cheerfully -- mildly -- bickering and music drifting out of Kelly's room... and so she did. 

+++


End file.
